The people who left Cuba with the mother of A's left fielder Yoenis Céspedes took a long journey to America, defecting to the Dominican Republic before moving on to the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British overseas territory 600 miles southeast of Miami.

While seeking political asylum from the Turks and Caicos Islands, the group slipped away again and landed in Miami over the weekend. Cubans who safely reach the U.S. are free to enter and can apply for residency under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

"It doesn't happen every day," said George Missick, the attorney hired to help Céspedes' family on the Turks and Caicos Islands.

He said in a telephone interview that the group arrived in August. In the past, Céspedes has said he was worried about his relatives' safety in the Dominican Republic in the wake of a legal dispute with a former representative.

In October, 16 people were detained for deportation from the Turks and Caicos Islands, prompting a bid for political asylum, Missick said. Soon, attorneys reached an agreement allowing for the release of three mothers and three children in the group from a detention facility.

The group filed for asylum in December, Missick said, and a month later, Céspedes' mother and the rest of the group were released, as well, on a $20,000 bond. They were allowed to live on their own while the United Nations' refugee agency studied their situation.

Missick said the group's asylum application was based in part on fear that family members would be persecuted if they returned to Cuba because of he way Céspedes left the country to pursue his baseball career. Immigration officials, meanwhile, argued that granting asylum would open the floodgates to more refugees using the islands.

Missick said he believed the application would have been granted. But on Monday, he got a call informing him his clients were gone. It is not clear how exactly they managed to make it to Florida, where they were reunited with Céspedes.

'They left before it came through," Missick said of the asylum case. "It's all a moot point, I guess. That's probably the ideal location they wanted to get to, in any event."